Kristen Anne Glover

Five in Tow

30 Days to Enjoying Your Children More: Discipline {Day 6}

New here? Click on the photo to begin at Day 1.

When we purchased our first home four years ago, we inherited a renegade grapevine that sprawled across an insufficient arbor in the backyard.  It had become wild, consuming the trees along our property line and devouring at least three different fences in neighboring yards.

The grape clusters were sparse and grew so high up in the trees, my husband had to borrow an extension ladder from a neighbor just to reach them.  Worse, the vine was in danger of killing itself.  The roots couldn’t produce enough energy to support the out-of-control branches.  Without drastic intervention, it would slowly die.

This was a shame because the grapes on this vine are particularly tasty.  The person who planted the vine and built the arbor probably knew that.  He had great intentions of harvesting bountiful fruit.  But that’s where his interest in the plant ended.  He did not care to prune or fertilize it, and he never trained its willful vines to grow where they could be strongest.

Whoever planted the vine did not love it enough to help it reach its potential.  As a result, the undisciplined vine was not healthy, productive, or even enjoyable.  In fact, it was downright annoying.  It was growing all over the neighborhood in a tangled mess, and I didn’t know how to begin to bring it under control.

So I did the only reasonable thing: I ignored it and planted two new grape vines.  The first year, the little whips needed little attention.  But the second year, things started to happen and I had to do something.   It had not occurred to me before that I knew nothing about growing grapes.  I searched the Internet, read books, and consulted diagrams.  My shoots don’t look like the diagrams.  So I evaluated each one, looking for strengths and weaknesses.  Finally, I had to clip things that might or might not grow back and tried to compensate with an extra layer of compost.

I began to understand why the first grapevine was left to nature.  Discipline is tricky business.

It is true of grapes, and it is true of children, only more so.  You cannot have truly healthy, productive, and enjoyable children if you do not practice discipline.  Notice, I didn’t say “if you do not practice punishment.”   Discipline and punishment are two different things.   Punishment is one aspect of discipline, but so is praise and encouragement!  Proper discipline includes both.

We are accustomed in our society to interchange the terms discipline and punishment, which is unfortunate.  Because of this, “discipline” often has a negative connotation.  You may even have felt angry, defensive, or anxious when you read the word.

But discipline is anything but negative.  It means to teach or train with the intention of developing or improving a desired character or skill.  Discipline is the process of weeding out weaknesses and encouraging strengths.  It always keeps the best interests of the object in mind.  The result of discipline is that a child is able to become more fully himself.  That’s something you don’t always see in the books on discipline, but it is a vital truth.  

Imagine how different our homes would be if every child was considered a unique and special member of God’s creation.  What would happen if each mother and father looked at each child and thought, “I wonder what treasures God has given you that I can help to polish and cut?  I wonder what kind of light you can shine if I help you?”

And instead of corralling behaviors and doling out punishments and rewards, as necessary as those things are, each parent made it his or her first intention to seek out the gifts and calling of that child so that the child could pursue it, become equipped to do it, and then delight in it for the glory of God?

What a rich and beautiful world it would be!  Instead of rows and rows of perfectly cultivated apple trees growing along perfectly tidy streets, ours would be a world of winding paths through glorious orchards bursting with every kind of exotic specimen ever created.  Each and every plant would be grown and trained to reach its fullest potential, each one disciplined to achieve its best, each one trained to be beautiful and productive.   Not a single tree would be made to fulfill a purpose for which it was not intended.

How delightful it would be to live in a world like that!  How delightful it would be to raise children like that!

If the cultivator of my overgrown grapevine had loved the vine enough to discipline in that way, it would have been pruned so the best vines could strengthen and grow.  Instead of wasting energy on unproductive greenery, the roots could have produced and sustained glorious fruit.  It would have been trained to grow over the arbor where the beauty of the plant and the abundance of the fruit could be enjoyed.   A vine like that would be more fully itself than the one that was left to die in my backyard.

Isn’t the same true of our children?  When we seek to cultivate our children in the way they were created, they are healthier, happier, and more enjoyable for it.  They get to be the best them they can be.

Our world was formed by an infinitely creative God to be rich and varied, and so were our families.  Disciplining our children allows the spectacular individualism of their God-given natures to shine through.   If we fail to train them in the way God intended them to grow, or attempt to train them to be something they are not, they will suffer, and we will miss out on the joy of God’s workmanship.

My grandparents raised eight children.  Four became missionaries or dedicated themselves to full-time ministry.  One became a chiropractor, another a fireman, and another a businessman.  And one became a race car driver.

The last one is not like the others, and that is the fun of it.  If you ever watch my uncle race, you will see that he is most fully himself when he is out on the track or under the hood of a car.  His passions, which have been disciplined into a life-long pursuit, are the part of him that most clearly communicates who he is and what he was made to do.  They are the part that shouts out to God’s infinite creativity.

When we discipline our children to pursue the passions put in their hearts by God, they become more fully who they were intended to be.  They get to be themselves, only better.  And we get to enjoy them as they were meant to be.

Discipline produces good fruit!

Join us tomorrow for Day 7: Constancy 

For further thought

1) How is discipline a loving act toward your children?

2) The Bible says God disciplines those He loves (Hebrews 12:6).  How is God’s discipline of you a loving act?  How does it show His father-heart toward you?

3) Think about each of your children.  Write down the good and godly qualities you see in them.  How can you discipline those things to bear more fruit in their lives?

30 Days to Enjoying Your Children More: Forgiveness {Day 5}

Looking for the beginning of the series? Click here!

It was not the best day to go to the pumpkin patch.  The clouds hung like furrowed brows over the sullen fields.  Everything was brown, except the things that were gray, and anything that wasn’t gray was about to be because it looked like rain.

But it wasn’t raining yet, and you can’t very well stay home on a chance of rain when you live in the Pacific Northwest or you’d never go anywhere.  Besides, I wanted to fill our Saturdays with memorable activities to help pass the months while my husband was away on Army duty.

Despite the chill in the air, the kids and I donned our fleece jackets and boots and headed off.  All of us were happy to muck about in the fields and look for the craziest pumpkin.  All but one child.  One child did not want to go to the pumpkin patch, or watch cannons shoot pumpkins into the woods, or go on a hay ride.  One child chose to be sullen and mean like the clouds over the field.  One child rained all over our fun family outing.

I was not prepared for that kind of weather.  It wouldn’t have been so bad if I wasn’t trying so hard to make sure my children were happy and well-loved during their father’s absence.  This child was fighting against all the good I had planned for them, and it hurt.

That night, after I put the kids to bed and the house was finally still, I shut myself in to the bathroom and succumbed to the heaviness of my heart.  I felt sad and wounded.  The evidence of ugliness lingered, like a bruise on my skin.

I turned the water as hot as it would go and stepped into the shower.  It’s easier to think in the shower, and to cry.  Words tumbled out into the water, words of sorrow over these sins lurking in such a young heart.  It seemed silly at first, like it shouldn’t have mattered as much as it did.  Kids do stuff like that.  I was probably being too sensitive.

But that childish choice had brought a division into our home.  It had taken the beauty of the day and marred the fellowship we shared.   It stood between my own child and me and threatened the closeness we enjoyed.  It wasn’t just immaturity.  It was sin, and I hated that it was here, in my home, in my child.  In me.

It was the same old struggle in new flesh.  How I wish I could have spared him from this awful inheritance!

So there, in my little earthly temple, I pleaded to God for forgiveness for the one whose heart had been so hard that day.  “Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy…”

The bitterness of the day vanished.  I found myself called to the place of Christ, not as a servant, but as a faithful high priest, earnestly interceding to God on behalf of my children.  It was as if I was standing in the gap between my children and God, clothed in Christ, asking for forgiveness for their weaknesses.  In the pattern of Christ, who prays for me, I prayed for my children as one who understands them and loves them.  I know them because they are mine.

It is an awesome thing to be a kingdom of priests, and nowhere is the reality of that calling more pronounced than when I come before the throne of God on behalf of my covenant child.  How I understand their weaknesses!  How I desire for their good, for their reconciliation to their Father!  When I grieve for the sins of my children, who often are unable yet to grieve for them themselves, it moves the heart of God.

It moves mine as well.  It is difficult to enjoy a child who hurts, offends, and disobeys.  It is hard to want to be around a child who selfishly ruins a perfectly good day by his actions or attitudes.  Even a very small person can inflict a great deal of pain.

But when I take on a ministry of reconciliation and stand in as a priest for my children, I am reminded that their offenses—as hurtful or annoying as they may be to me— are ultimately sins against God.  They are not just childish rebellions to be dismissed.  They are real sins with eternal consequences.   When my toddler refuses to obey, it is sin.  When my daughter treats her siblings harshly, it is sin.  When my son lies, it is sin.

What an awful reality.  Speaking the truth of it back to God and asking for forgiveness acknowledges the fact that my children are sinners in need of repentance.  Hearing the words spoken brings my awareness into the situation.  I cannot ignore their weaknesses when I am confessing them aloud.

It is a truth that turns my heart for my children back to God and renews my purpose to teach and train them in the way they should go because I know the consequences of sin.  I am weak!  I am prone to wander just as they are.  I see their weakness and I have compassion on them.  I understand.

But I also know the solution to the problem.  That is the beauty of the priestly role.  It allows me the opportunity to point my children to Christ, the true High Priest, the true Sacrifice.  Struggling with my children’s sin is one of the hardest parts of parenting.  But leading them to the Source of all forgiveness is truly the greatest joy.

I am writing to you, little children, because your sins have been forgiven you for His name’s sake.
1 John 2:12

Thank you for reading!  Please join us tomorrow for Day 6: Discipline. 

For further thought

1) Have you thought about yourself as a priest as we are called in 1 Peter 1:9?  Why or why not?

2) How is your role as a priest different than Christ’s role as a priest?  How is it similar?  See Hebrews 4:14-5:10.

3) Can you have a ministry of reconciliation in your home if you are harboring bitterness or taking offense at the sins of your children?  How can t help to recognize that their sins are ultimately sins against God?

30 Days to Enjoying Your Children More: Sacrifice {Day 4}

Thank you for joining us! You can find Day 1 here.

When I was young, my mother read stories.  She read stories at naptime and stories at bedtime and stories any time she didn’t know what else to do.  She filled hours and hours of rainy days with books.  Together, we looked in the windows of a little house in the middle of big woods, chased a very fat rabbit through an English garden, and hoped to anything that a spider could find a way to save a pig.

Sometimes she read missionary biographies, and our living room became the densest of jungles.  We held our breath through cannibal country and the dangerous back-allies of the Orient.  We watched the Moravian missionaries seal their belongings into caskets and send them off to Africa, where they would surely die.

It was fabulously romantic and terribly heroic to a seven-year-old with an overactive imagination and a particular aptitude for martyrdom.  I could take up a cross like that and carry it to glory.

But it is God who orders the sacrifice, and it is God who cuts the cross.  To my surprise, I was not made for being a martyr, but a mother.

The sacrifices of motherhood are not glorious like I desired.  They rarely draw the attention of the crowd.  Motherhood carries the simple, ordinary cross of ordinary days.  It is the cross of daily self-denial in the mundane circumstances when no one is watching.

It is not particularly notable, and hardly ever acknowledged.  It is lonely and monotonous and altogether mindless, sometimes.

And that’s the rub.  It is all so ordinary.  The dailyness of this cross cuts against my flesh.  I have other gifts to offer, other talents to showcase, but here I am, doing nothing more than making lunches and wiping noses day after day after day.  That’s hardly the stuff that changes the world, I think.

I begin to feel a bit like Cain, who found the sacrifices of God to be unbearable, not because he could not give them, but because he could not give what he wanted.  He was a man with a garden, but the sacrifice was meat.  That kind of sacrifice didn’t make him look good at all.  It didn’t showcase his natural talents or abilities.  It was the standard one-size-fits all model, and he wanted a custom fit.

Dissatisfaction settles in where pride has left an open door.  It settled in to Cain, and human blood was spilled onto trembling earth.  Some days, it settles in to me, and I begin to feel the hardship of my position under a cross that isn’t glorious at all.  Pride tells me I am losing my life—my self—for nothing.

That is a lie that keeps me crippled under the weight of a burden that is supposed to be easy.  It is a lie that steals the joy of motherhood and the joy of giving to God the very thing He has asked of me.

In those moments, when I am feeling so small, so devoid of anything good to give to God, I must embrace the words of truth.  There is no greater love than this, than to lay down my life for another.   To give my life for my children is the most profound and powerful way I can serve Him.   It is the simplest and most irrefutable way I can proclaim Him.  Motherhood is the gospel in action.

When I embrace the dailyness of motherhood, I am embracing the daily giving of one life for another.  It is a picture of the gospel that all the world longs to see.  It is a sacrifice that touches the hearts of my children and secures a godly remnant for a future generation.  And that is just the thing that can change the world.

If my seven-year-old self could see me now, she might be disappointed, at first.  But the beauty of the cross is this: when I give God the sacrifices He desires in the way He requires, I find joy.  It is awfully daily, awfully ordinary, and far more glorious than anything I could have imagined.

 

Please join us tomorrow for Day 5: Forgiveness

For further thought

1)      Read Psalm 51:17.  What are the sacrifices God requires of you?

2)      Micah 6:8 is a well-known passage.  Think about it in light of motherhood.  How can you please God in your daily calling?

3)     Do you sometimes feel like Cain?  What are the sacrifices you would like to bring to God?  Consider this in against the writing of the apostle Paul, who had reason to boast about his sacrifices for God.  What brought Paul the greatest joy in serving God (see Philippians 3:7-11).  How does Paul’s perspective change the way you view the mundane aspects of parenting?